


Man That You Fear

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-24
Updated: 2007-04-24
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:30:22
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8698927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: The boy that you loved is the man that you fear.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

**Man That You Fear**  
_By: Lexalot_  
  
Summary: The boy that you loved is the man that you fear.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: Possessions are fleeting. So who could ever truly own them anyway?  
  
Pairing: Dean/Sam  
  
Spoilers: Pilot, Bloody Mary, Nightmare  
  
Inspiration and Reference: Music - "Man That You Fear" by Marilyn Manson.  
  
Warning: Incest!  
  
Notes: Written for Challenge #7: Water/Reflection at KAZ2Y5.  
  
***  
  
It's never easy to question the true nature of someone you love. But Dean has. It's not exactly a way anyone wants to spend their time, wondering who someone you're supposed to be close to really is. But when Dean invited himself back into his brother's life, and subsequently his campus housing, he felt like he was breaking and entering into the world of a complete stranger.  
  
Even now, watching Sam unpack his things at the latest motel room, Dean realized that though this felt familiar. It wasn't. They were almost strangers. Everything had changed. And the real difference between Sam and Dean was that Dean knew why.  
  
After vanquishing the Woman in White, Dean realized he didn't know his brother like he thought he did. Sam seemed to have become a whole other person. Like he was no longer a Winchester. Or maybe more like he didn't want to be one anymore. And yeah, that pissed Dean off, because he never liked that attitude from Sam, like his baby brother was above hunting, better than their father, and freer than Dean.  
  
Then the visions started. Sam just casually dropped hints at the worst times that he sees things. All kinds of things, no less. And that made Dean wonder. What did he really know about Sam? He knew he shouldn't be suspicious of his own brother, but Sam had never hid things from him before he left for college. Never. There were no secrets between them. Sam and Dad were a different story, but the Winchester brothers didn't hide anything from one another. Not something like this.  
  
So what did Dean know? The encrypted facts to decoding Sam Winchester were these: mother Mary died in his nursery, and girlfriend Jess died in the place they shared in the same horrible way. Logical conclusion, the only one that any logic could dictate: that the two women who had meant the most in Sam's life were killed by the same thing. It's the stuff nightmares are made of. Sam's nightmares.  
  
Sam was the only common factor. He was the key.  
  
Then out of the blue, another lock emerged. Max. Sam's complementary opposite in the universe. Different but the same. When Sam started having nightmares about Max and his family, Sam had asked why. Dean had a possible answer for Sam, but he hadn't given it to him. A potential truth can be more harmful than a worried silence. An omission on Dean's part, but a necessary one. Because if he ever told Sam what he had really thought, Sam would hate himself forever, even if Dean were wrong. And Dean couldn't afford to be mistaken on this.  
  
There were thousands of stories about the supernatural phenomena in this world. Dean knew a lot of them by heart. One night, a particular story came to mind and stuck there like a thorn. There was a story of a thing that would take the form of any man, seduce his wife, and father a child by her, and no one would ever be the wiser to the baby's true ancestry. Until the father came to claim what was his. Because this thing didn't do all that in the name of fun. No, it wanted offspring. And if it were a demon, it was a safe bet that it would plague its children until they were the half-breeds a demon would be proud to call its own.  
  
Dean hated that theory. The mere idea left mental scars. He chastised himself for even considering the possibility. But it made sense, didn't it? Sam and Max had been developing the same powers in the same amount of time and their mothers had both met the same bizarre demise. And psychic abilities didn't come close to running in the Winchester family. It would have been the natural conclusion if Dean had been casing anyone else: Sam could be the son of the demon that killed their mother and his girlfriend. It made terrifying sense. And though Dean refused to really believe it. He thought about it every time he looked at Sam.  
  
"Dean?" Sam was staring at Dean, getting self-conscious about Dean staring at him.  
  
With his painful spiral of thought interrupted, Dean came back to the moment, not wanting to lose himself in this hellish labyrinth again, because that wasn't anywhere near the end of it. So Dean welcomed the chance to stave off falling into the abyss. Because there was something else that Dean thought about every time he looked at Sam.  
  
Sam watched Dean approach him wordlessly, eerily calm. He pulled back in surprise when Dean's lips touched his. Dean didn't let Sam's confusion and hesitance stop him. He put the pedal to the metal. He had finally turned them on to this road, and he was going to ride it as far as he could. He kissed Sam again, deeper this time, more self-assured, more insistent, more determined. At first, Sam just let it happen, passively allowing Dean to drive him wherever he wanted. And then the awkwardness seemed to pass, magically left in the distance, leaving nothing but the need of two men who didn't need anyone else in the world more than they needed each other. Clothes were stripped off in a hungered frenzy, and hushed sounds of desire were swallowed by the emptiness of the dark, dingy room.  
  
When it was all over, they laid on the bed, facing one another. Sam's eyes got heavy first, and then all Dean had to do was wait.  
  
As soon as he was sure Sam was asleep, he carefully slipped away and headed into the bathroom. He flicked the switch and the dull yellow light came on as he locked himself inside. He felt little tremors ripple through his soul. Then, he glanced down at his hands and realized that his whole body was quaking. He felt the swirl of nausea begin in the soul of his stomach, and he threw himself over the sink. It was quick and left an acidic burn in his throat and his nostrils, and it did nothing to still his trembling frame.  
  
Dean turned the faucet on, rinsing the sink and then filling it. He immersed his face in the plastic basin, half his head submerged in the water. It was ice cold but behind his eyelids he still saw nothing but fire. Flames licking at his mind. He'd never escape them. Especially not now.  
  
And there it was. Rock bottom. The floor of a seemingly bottomless pit.  
  
After a minute, he desperately needed breath and he whipped his head up from the sinkful of water. He saw himself in the mirror, and he expected her to come. Bloody Mary. She had known. Hell, maybe if he said it right now, there was a vengeful Mary around here that could finish what the other one had started. She could be his conscience and melt the sins out of his spirit. Because if he wasn't damned before, he certainly was now. He fucked Sammy. Seduced his baby brother. And though that was at the heart of the problem, a simple albeit warped case of incest didn't even begin to cover it.  
  
His reflection mocked him. But it wasn't Bloody Mary and her showcase of blame. It was the truth. She had known the truth about Dean.  
  
Because Sam was indeed the victim of something wicked, and though Dean didn't know how, he had figured out why. All that time before he realized, and all the time since... When Sam was busy blaming himself for Jess's death, Dean remembered telling his brother that Sam should blame him for it, because after all, Dean was the one who dragged Sam away from her. But that was only half right.  
  
Dean's gaze dropped down into the water, and his eyes widened when he saw the distorted reflection of another figure in the room. He whirled around and there was no one. But he knew something was definitely there. And he knew what. He slowly turned to the mirror, and there she was, standing behind him and vacantly staring back at his reflection. Jess.  
  
That was how he had made the discovery all those months ago. That was how he had known. She had been haunting him ever since she died. Haunting her killer. And she had let him know as much. Dean had been jealous, resentful, and pained when Sam went back to Jess after Dean had tried to reconnect with him. And conveniently, Jess was removed from the equation before Dean could take off. It seemed like a coincidence. After all, how could he have been responsible for what happened to her? Why would that even occur to him? But why would he feel so guilty? So much guilt that Bloody Mary would pluck the truth right out of his subconscious. If he had any doubts about his true nature from what Jess's ghost had revealed, Bloody Mary had obliterated them, along with any hope of reprieve for being glad that it was just he and Sam now. And after that encounter with Bloody Mary, when he recalled feeling just as jealous, resentful, and pained over the attention their mother used to give Sam, Dean knew.  
  
"You're damned." Jess's words were delicately spoken, angelic almost, her tone glazed with raw pity and an undercurrent of biting anger. "And to think that you believed Sam was the monster."  
  
When his eyes squeezed shut, he knew she was gone and he was alone with his own self-loathing. Dean fought the convulsions building up inside him. He couldn't start crying now because he would never be able to stop. And then Sam would hear and come asking questions of his own. Questions exploring how well he really knows his big brother, and what could he possibly want to hide. It could only be something too unimaginable to speak. Something worse than being hopelessly in love with someone who shares your flesh and blood. Dean had kept his feelings hidden long enough, and now he had found a new low in finally acting upon them. This would only make it harder, make everything more complicated, more irreparably and irrevocably fucked up.  
  
Dean tried to tell himself it was beyond his control, that none of it had been his fault. He didn't will those things to happen, but somehow his will had made them happen. Those tragedies came to pass because of him. Direct or indirect. His mother, his brother's girlfriend, a vengeful spirit tuned into his guilt. They all knew it led back to him. So he could make vain attempts to delude himself all he wanted, but he was still the freak responsible.  
  
He could never tell Sam. His little brother would hate him. His father would hate him. They'd both probably kill him. It's not bad enough to have to live in fear of what you are and wonder how you came to be that way, but to have to fear retribution from the only ones who'll have you? That's the most unkind cut of all.  
  
As terrible a thing as it was to think, Dean wished Sam had been the cause of the death around him after all. He wished that it had been Sam who killed them without realizing it, and then Dean could live with being the only one who knew. That would have been easier to swallow.  
  
But it wasn't Sam that didn't know his true self. It was Dean. And Dean didn't want to know anymore.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 


End file.
